The leaves have already fallen. Only the bare vine branches, resembling long tentacles reaching for the sky, remain. The animals no longer have to hide themselves and the buzzards take advantage of this: they are perched on the wooden poles of the rows looking out for easy prey. After the snow has melted, in mid-January, the trimming and the pruning once again begins. Even if the vineyard was planted that same year, every vine is assessed in its stage of development and trimmed according to its strength. In the young vineyards, cultivated via ‘cordone speronate’ (supports and cords), just a few buds are left on the old wood. We prune the tops and toss them on the ground where they later will be chopped up. This is a meticulous and precise work that requires hundreds of hours per hectare from January to March. The moment arrives to fertilize the vineyards with cow or horse manure. Then we fix the iron wire where the new vine branches will grow, the dead vines are removed and replaced, the poles are straightened or replaced, and the maintenance of the wires and tension rods of the long rows are done.
